This was a very quick project. These small resin figures are pretty simple and perfect to squeeze in between projects. Last time I posted that the parts were sanded and soaked in an industrial strength cleaner. A day later, they get the scrubbing treatment with a dip in the ultrasonic cleaner and water.

After the scrubbing session, the parts are laid out to air dry. Once all the parts are dry, I can work on the immediate problem areas on the kit. There are a few bubbles and chipped resin, but a short session with some light curing putty and sanding fills and fixes things. This is just on the bare resin. The parts are now ready for priming.

This past weekend was the annual IPMS Orange County’s Region 8 Contest: OrangeCon. This is always a great contest to attend. More so now to spread the word that is Gunpla. While setting up, an older gentleman looked over at me and exclaimed, “Hey, you’re one of Those Gundam Guys!” This always makes me chuckle. He then proceeded to tell me that he had met me a few years back at a previous OrangeCon with a friend of his that I had known from a previous IPMS Nationals in 2007. The guy was from Arizona and was inspired by our talk about gunpla and brought his own custom made Zaku; pictured below. Apologies for the dark pictures. SciFi is the redheaded stepchild of model competitions, so we’re usually in some dark corner out of the best lit areas!

He said that he was having a blast building gunpla and was building more. He ended up winning 1st place in the Sci/Fi Mech/Gundam category – that got split into SciFi Gundam and Scifi Non Gundam. But more on that later. I chatted with him for a while and told him about our show, but he’s unable to come because he lives in Tucson. Blah, people from all over the country are flying/driving in for SCGMC. But that’s another story. Fellow TGG members Brandon and Jonathan came and entered their kits. They got 2nd and 3rd in the SciFi Gundam category.

Time for the first resin figure project of the year. This has been a fairly productive year so far with finishing a number of gunpla project. Time to get at least one figure kit. I picked this kit up at Anime Expo at the Volks booth. They were there last year and back again this year. They even have a location in Torrance, so if I ever need to order something, I believe I can pick it up at their warehouse. Damn cool for folks that have had trouble getting original resin kits. And these are not your run of the mill resin figure kits. These have a high level of quality control. They are engineered using the bandai gunpla model; everything is molded in color. The color separation for these kits are insane. Last year, I grabbed a Revy kit from them and I was sold. You just shake the box and the kit’s done. It’s that friggin simple. Ok, maybe not quite that easy; but if you’ve ever built any other resin anime figure (original or recast) try these Volks kits. For anyone interested in trying their first resin anime figure kit; get a kit from Volks. The comparison is akin to building a macross kit from hasegawa to building any bandai gunpla kit released in the last 5 years.

Last week, we had our July build gathering and the goal for the day was to get her semi cleaned up and pinned together. Like most other Volks kits, she has some options. She comes with two sets of right arms to hold up a sign or her jacket. Pinned together, I have her holding the jacket. Again, the pictures below show the kit as is out of the box, pinned together. The color separation and engineering is amazing.

This has been a very productive weekend. Granted I was working on both kits for a while and I did start this kit a while ago and worked on it on and off over the past year, but nothing significant until I moved to the new house. Last week’s post showed some decent progress and during the downtime from the Gusion work, I focused on this, and vice versa. The box art shows the base as done in a single grey color. Almost like a tombstone. I didn’t care for it and thought it would look nicer with the Survey Corps logo painted up. As usual, I always start with the lowest surface level, which was the brick. It was also the largest surface area, so that was painted with a dark red that looked as close to your standard red brick as my colorblind eyes could see. Once that dried, it was masked off and gloss black painted for the emblem proper. Once the black cured, the emblem’s borders were painted with alclad steel.

A few days of rest after AX is always healthy; but I’m still fairly gunplaed out after pushing pretty hard to finish the sucker punch diorama. I’ve still not taken a quick video showing the kit with all it’s lights and morse conversation between the two zeonic suits; but I’ll get around to it soon.

From AX, Volks was in the exhibit hall and while I didn’t really put much faith in seeing resin kits. The booth was fairly simple with some display pieces; and historically, most booths with these figures were not selling kits. I did notice some FSS kits they were selling, all plastic and no resin. But I asked about resin figures and they pointed to a sign right in front of me with their whole line of charagumi kits. Picking up my jaw off the floor, I immediately asked if they had the Revy kit. I’ve been interested in this kit for a while as well as the Saber kit; but I was immediately suckered into picking up the Revy kit. I am usually pretty good at walking away from AX without picking up a single kit; but damn, I could not pass up getting at least one kit from Volks. I hope they did well enough that they come back next year.

Cracking open the kit, the parts separation is amazing. They are using colored resin. There are still gates that need to be removed and mold lines that need sanding. But baring any pinholes, it would be as simple as just clear coating the thing, gluing everything together, and adding the decals. But like the colored bandai kits, I will be priming and painting this kit. It will definitely be an easier resin figure kit; but the same work for any resin kit is needed.

Another note about this kit is the extra parts. The kit comes with two heads, one with her mouth open biting down on a gun mag; then another with her mouth closed. There are also options on her left hand, either holding another gun mag, or holding the second gun. This leads to options for the holsters; an extra empty holster and one that has a gun holstered. Pretty damn cool to include all these extra parts; and effectively, all the parts can be painted and then interchanged.

This weekend was the build gathering and I actually finished this kit before the build gathering even started. This past couple of weeks, I have been dealing with the issues of the paint chipping on one of the chap parts. I had painted the chap piece along with the other parts and masked as I normally masked and the paint chipped when I started unmasking. I ran the part in a tub of lacquer thinner and placed this tub in the ultrasonic cleaner with water and ran it there; then painted and it chipped again. I then soaked the thing in more degreaser, ran it with the degreaser in the ultrasonic cleaner, and left it soak in the degreaser overnight. Then ran the part in isopropanol alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner and dried the part. Upon close inspection, I found that the mold release was still on the surface of the kit, so those areas were rigorously sanded and the part re-cleaned in alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner. Dried completely, then repainted and masked without any issues.

With that done,I finally got the rest of her finished and assembled. One of the major last parts was the hair. Once that was finished, I got to working on the details such as clear glosses, washes, the fingernails, and flat coats. The very last piece was her butterfly hair clip. And with that, she’s done!

I got two more videos in the can now. One for painting the skin tone and the other for just general painting that includes work with metallics and a little discussion on Alclad paints from the regular metallics to their enamel candy line and hot metal red. As usual, I ran into some issues with the paint chipping off the resin. I attribute the issues to improper soaking or cleaning of the resin. I did soak it over night which is my usual time allotment for that process. But the cleaner may need to be changed out; I’ve been using the same tub of purple power for well over 6 years now, possibly longer. I don’t think there is an expiration, but there’s quite a bit of gunk deposited in the liquid. The parts may have just had some super mold release. Who knows. The process is the same, you accept it and continue.

The following process progressed over several days, and in the video, I compress all this into a 25 or so long video. Post production editing is cool yet laborious work.

Painting Anime Skin Video:

The other video as well as a pictorial description of the kit’s progression so far after the jump.